Meetings with Remarkable Men

“Pleased to meet you Vic. Good to have another world champ legend in the family.”

Feet shuffled nervously and Vic struggled making eye contact with the imperious newcomer. Eventually he plucked up enough courage.

“You’re not what I remember either. They told me I was meeting the Don. He was a little bloke. I didn’t get to see him in the flesh. But I did get a front row seat on a low cloud for Headingley in 1930. That 334 was chanceless, even if I would have liked to see a bit more risk taking. Didn’t get to see ’48. Too many newcomers up here after the big war. Crowded the place out. Hard to get a good seat.”

The big guy was getting impatient now.

“Look I am THE DON. The Don. The Donald. What’s the difference. I had the lawyers copyright all of them. There has never been anyone else like me. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you like I did with the Chinese. They tell me you were a great batter in the Indiana Premier League. Funny – I was expecting a big guy like Babe Ruth.”

Vic was getting riled now.

“I never played any of those pyjama games. That’s a modern abomination. I played real five day tests against true competitors. Anyway its the Indian Premier League. Indian – like Prince Ranjitsinjhi – the finest batsman – not batter – that I ever saw. A true genius.”

The Don’s face furrowed.

“The Cleveland Indians?”

“No, India in South East Asia. Don’t you know anything about the world?”

“Don’t get snippy with me Vic, or I’ll get you twitter trolled. Geography has never been my strong suit. I’m more a businessman. I guess you mean those pointy bits under China. I always wondered what they did there. Didn’t know baseball was big there. I guess they never made it to the World Series.”

Vic started to think he was wasting his time trying to engage with the big man.

“You say we’re relatives, but aren’t our names different?”

“Trump. Trumper. It was all the same when Grandaddy came out from Prussia. He was a Drumpf, but that didn’t sound so good over here so he used the family marketing genius to make us the ace of cards. I’m sure your side of the family did the same. The Trump’s have always been one step ahead of the game. And the law.”

His eyes shifted and he gave Vic the stare.

“I hope you’re not recording this. You know what happened to that NBC guy who released those tapes of me fooling around with a few gals. Front line correspondent in Syria now.”

Vic was disappointed this was not THE Don, and decided not to waste his time further.

“You do know where you are don’t you. There’s no point in revenge up here. Too late to get back at people now. Don’t know how you ever got in here. Sounds like you bribed the bloke at the gate. My kidneys packed up when I was only 37 years old. My best years were still ahead of me. What happened to you? Assassin? Terrorist? Ex-wife?”

“Nah nothing so dramatic. I was just about to be inaugurated President of the United States, nuke North Korea and blockade China when I had a massive brain clot. Pity, I was just about to release the latest volume of my autobiography. Would have made me more millions. The ghost writer had to rename it. Still a best seller. Great title.”

Facebook and Twitter

Want to know when new stories are posted?

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email. Note: this is not our eNewsletter sign up. Use the form on the other side to subscribe to our email eNewsletter as well!